Home schooling in Germany....ILLEGAL !!!

[Senormac]

German swat team storms house to abduct home schooled girl (http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/153709.aspx)

Sure doesn't seem to me like Germany has come that far from pre WWII. The master race seems to be rearing its ugly head once again.

[Bill_the_Pony]

Not nice. :shakehead:

Then there's this little quip:

And CBN News has learned that Germany's treatment of homeschoolers will be mentioned in next year's U.S. State Department annual report on human rights violations.

Maybe we can bomb them back into the stone ages too, in the lip service of democracy. :Smirk:

[MPG]

German swat team storms house to abduct home schooled girl (http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/153709.aspx)
You know, you may not want to believe everything that you read on Christian news web sites. Believe it or not, Christians can lie too.

I checked out a bunch of German news sites to find out more about this, because I found it curious that I had not heard about this "swat team operation" (seeing how I live not too far from where this supposedly happened and I work with quite a few people from Erlangen). I even found a web site (ironically enough a Christian one) where the girl was interviewed. There was no mention of a swat team that stormed her house. The police picked her up - admittedly apparently with a rather large group of policemen - but her house was not stormed by a swat team. There was no "raid".
Sure doesn't seem to me like Germany has come that far from pre WWII. The master race seems to be rearing its ugly head once again.
Wow. Just wow. Man, you are so far gone, it's not even funny anymore. Home schooling is illegal in Germany. Yes. How exactly do you draw a connection from that to the "master race"?

A law is a law, and if you break the law, then you have to deal with the consequences. Not every law is automatically right, but if you don't like a law, you don't break it (and later complain that this caused you trouble), but you lobby for changing it. That's how democracies work. Actually, this particular law is derived from the German constitution, which was ratified in 1949, while Germany was still under close US supervision, and nobody then complained about how this is supposedly something "fascist". In fact, this is well-accepted across the whole political spectrum (including the currently ruling conservative "Christian Democrat Union" CDU), and if there was anything potentially "fascist" in it, you can be sure that the vocal left wing of the German political spectrum would have made a fuss over it in the last 60 years.

I think it's quite obvious that the main problem that Christian groups see with compulsory school attendance in Germany is that this law is one of the roadblocks that keeps Germany from veering towards a Christian fundamentalist state and allows children of closed-minded parents to see at least one more perspective on life and the world than their parents'.

[Senormac]

You know, you may not want to believe everything that you read on Christian news web sites. Believe it or not, Christians can lie too.

You know.....I figured an anti christ guy like you would be sure to check every possible story he could find about a story like this to figure some way to bend it into an "its ok they did that" thing. Course you believe the news stories you dug up about it....or at least put them forth. If she was taken from her house by multiple police agents against her and her parents will.........I see a problem with that.......

Its a freedom issue.....To not be able to home school is completely controlling. They want the youth to learn only what they teach. And they don't love the kids......they are only subjects or maybe stats to them.

Its amazing to me that you would defend this action. You, my friend, are the one who is way far gone.

[MPG]

You know.....I figured an anti christ guy like you would be sure to check every possible story he could find about a story like this to figure some way to bend it into an "its ok they did that" thing.
Actually, I'd still think that it was "ok" even if that had been an atheist family. On the other hand, I wonder if you'd be as outraged about this if this had been a scientologist or a satanist family. I suspect that my stance on religion has much less impact on this issue than yours.
Course you believe the news stories you dug up about it....or at least put them forth.
I think I found three news stories about this. All of them on Christian web sites, so I figured that they had no reason to lie about there not being a raid. They were obviously all biased against the police action, so I don't consider them to be absolutely trustworthy, but at least none of them mentioned anything as over-the-top as the stuff on the website you linked to.

By the way, one other thing missing from the article above: The police only showed up with the "youth office" officials when they visited the house the second time, implying that the family refused to cooperate the first time. It's not like police go from house to house in Germany, dragging children out of their parents' arms at gunpoint.

There was not a single story in the German mainstream press - which is rather understandable, because they don't report every single domestic problem, or else they'd be reporting a lot of stuff every day. In fact, it is not a terribly unusual thing that the youth office picks up kids from home where the parents didn't send them to school, e.g. because the parents are alcoholics or simply incapable of handling their kids. In these cases, this is also usually done against the will of both the parents and the kids, but nevertheless, the state has a responsibility to protect children.
Its a freedom issue.....To not be able to home school is completely controlling. They want the youth to learn only what they teach.
Yes, you're right, that's exactly what the parents in this case want. Complete control.

Nobody in Germany is keeping parents from home schooling their children. Nobody. If the parents want to teach their children something after school or on their weekends, that is their own business. It is their right to do so, and there is no way for any government agencies to interfere with this right. The problem is not that those parents want to home school their kids - they want to be the only ones who teach their kids anything. They want to be the only source of every single thought that grows in their children's minds. As you said, complete control. That's what they want.
Its amazing to me that you would defend this action. You, my friend, are the one who is way far gone.
It's easy to defend it, because it's the law in Germany. The parents broke the law. Whether or not the law is right is a secondary question, but if people break the law, they have to expect that the police will show up sooner or later.

An interesting additional piece of information: Unlike in the US, religious education is a part of the curriculum in public schools. I think it's a bit hard to judge this issue without actually knowing the whole cultural background.

[rappites]

There are to many beleifs in the world to teach children religion in schools no matter where you are at. Nobody should have the right to teach your children what THEY believe in.

I think you should be taught the basics in school. I do not think religion should be a basic. We leave that up to the parents here in the states to teach their children religion because of the fact that there are so many beliefs.

Ahhhh....the land of freedom.

I send my child to a public school and home school him some more. Only to futher his education more.

[MPG]

There are to many beleifs in the world to teach children religion
Actually, I agreed with you up to this point. :wink: Why did this sentence have to go on? :D Seriously, the way I (mis-)quoted it above, it's a perfectly valid argument.
Nobody should have the right to teach your children what THEY believe in.
Actually, I forgot to mention that you can opt out of religious education classes in Germany if you want.

Still, for kids from religious families, it shouldn't hurt to be taught religion by people who actually speak Latin and Greek, can provide multiple interpretations of certain Bible passages, know the historical background, etc. Religion may not be a science, but theology is a science, and a very complicated one at that. I may not be very fond of religious education in public schools, but if I have to pick between parents just passing on their idea of what the Bible says vs. kids being taught by university-educated theologists who can cover the whole breadth of the topic, I know what I'd pick.

[Jakester]

people who actually speak Latin and Greek, can provide multiple interpretations of certain Bible passages, know the historical background, etc.
I think that's the core problem. For many, there is not supposed to be more than one interpretation of the Bible, and many evangelicals love to take passages out of the context of history (or even the rest of the passage) when it suits them.

[Senormac]

I think you should be taught the basics in school. I do not think religion should be a basic. We leave that up to the parents here in the states to teach their children religion because of the fact that there are so many beliefs.

I think schools should teach the basics too......like math, english, grammar, science, and finance (which is what most home schooling teaches) I'd say yea to history too, but lately I've been hearing alot about "revisionist" history, so I'm not sure it can be done. It seems to be so full of opinion.

No body is gonna care about your child as much as you do (you meaning any parent) and thats why giving them over to a state or govt institution to do it...is so appalling to people, cuz they don't have the kids best interests at heart.

And I'm hardly outraged, but I had no idea that Germany was so militant in their teaching ideals. I find that a bit scary. Freedom is always the enemy of control.